Stick to the facts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflictIf the Palestinians truly sought peace with Israel, they would have peace
January 31, 2017 12:00 AM
By Stuart V. Pavilack
World media outlets continue to publish misleading and erroneous statements about Israel, the Post-Gazette among them. The PG’s Jan. 17 editorial “Mideast Chat in Paris” continues this longstanding practice. In describing a gathering in Paris of countries and organizations discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it stated that the government of Israel favors the expansion of West Bank settlements.
It is no wonder. President Barack Obama on “60 Minutes” on Jan. 15 justified a U.S. abstention on a U.N. resolution condemning Israel's settlements on the West Bank by saying, “We are reaching a tipping point where the pace of settlements, during the course of my presidency, has gotten so substantial ...” Mr. Obama’s spin doctor, Ben Rhodes, had earlier contended on the “PBS NewsHour” that “tens of thousands of settlements are being constructed.”
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America debunked these remarks, pointing out that “Israel has built no new settlements in approximately two decades.” The only thing being built are new apartments in existing settlements. Peace Now, a left-leaning organization, puts the number of settlements at 131, with another 97 built by individuals and consid-ered illegal by the Israeli government.
The PG editorial claimed the Paris conference made it clear that stability in the Middle East will not be possible until the Palestinians get a state. It said that the “growing vigor” of the international Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement against Israel “sends the same message.”
In reality, BDS is an attempt to delegitimize the existence of Israel. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs observes that BDS “in Western circles is commonly misunderstood. It is generally viewed as a progressive, nonviolent campaign led by Palestinian grassroots organizations and propelled by Western human rights organizations.” But BDS advocates repeatedly have made statements such as this one from co-founder Omar Barghouti: “Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that the real intent of BDS is to destroy Israel.
Dan Simpson, in his Jan. 18 PG column “Obama in Review,” said of the Israelis and Palestinians: “Both, of course, continued to get heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”
Israel's 2017 budget is $94.1 billion. It gets about $3.5 billion in U.S. military aid and, by contract, roughly 90 percent of it has to be spent in the United States. This puts thousands of Americans to work.
The Palestinian Authority's 2016 budget was $4.3 billion, and it gets about $1 billion from the international community. It squanders its aid and projects an income shortage of $1.4 billion. The U.S. contribution to the PA for 2017 is $363 million. One can say the PA is heavily subsidized, but not Israel.
Lastly, Israel has offered the PA its own state on two occasions. In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered all of Gaza, 97 percent of the West Bank and to dismantle 63 isolated settlements. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat walked away.
In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Mr. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, the territorial equivalent of 100 percent of Gaza and the West Bank with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. He went so far as to agree to allow the relocation to Israel of 1,000 Palestinian “refugees” a year for five years. When asked by a reporter what he proposed in return, Mr. Abbas replied, “I rejected it out of hand.”
While the world would like to see a peaceful resolution, neither the United Nations nor the Paris conference can dictate a solution. The reality is that Israel does not have a partner with which to negotiate peace.
If and when a true partner appears, a solution could be reached only by the two parties. This situation would be much easier to understand if the media would stick to the facts.
Stuart V. Pavilack is executive director of the Zionist Organization of America: Pittsburgh.
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